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Republicans will be hard-pressed to pass Trump’s ‘Great Healthcare Plan’

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President Donald Trump announced his “Great Healthcare Plan” to little fanfare on Capitol Hill last week.

The question now is how willing and able congressional Republicans will be to actually pass any of it into law after stumbling for years over politically toxic plans to undo Obamacare. The prognosis is not encouraging for the White House.

Key parts of the light-on-details proposal likely won’t meet the strict Senate rules for party-line legislation that could skirt a Democratic filibuster. Similar cost-reduction proposals from Republicans ran into problems on that count in last year’s tax-cuts-focused megabill.

White House officials argue the new health care plan features initiatives that should garner bipartisan support, but Democrats are already balking. They’re in no mood to help Republicans out after Trump’s megabill slashed Medicaid funding, and they’re still fighting to revive the expired Obamacare subsidies that the Trump plan rejects.

“Time and again, Donald Trump has made empty promises to the American people about lowering their health care costs, and today’s announcement is no different,” Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement following the release of the White House framework.

Even without the procedural hurdles, uniting Republicans behind a health care plan has repeatedly proven next to impossible. The fate of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies roiled the party for months before they lapsed Jan. 1, and now there are major divisions over whether to pursue more health initiatives using the partisan budget reconciliation process.

One key House faction, the conservative Republican Study Committee, released a blueprint last week for a party-line bill that included health care provisions, and its leaders now argue Trump’s plan mirrors key parts of it. They are among a significant GOP bloc that sees reconciliation as the only way the party can pass health legislation — or any other substantive policy — ahead of the midterms.

“Our framework for a second reconciliation bill includes many of these historic reforms, because that’s how we’re going to secure real wins for the people who sent us here,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), who leads the group of nearly 200 House Republicans, said in a statement to Blue Light News.

But vulnerable incumbents have much less of a stomach for taking up a new health care package before Election Day — especially after the bruising Medicaid and Obamacare subsidy fights.

One House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly about conference dynamics described the appetite among GOP moderates for another major party-line bill — especially a health-focused one — as “not good.”

“You’re going to need 218 votes, which means you’re going to need to build consensus across the conference on what it is we’re pursuing,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a centrist in a tough reelection fight who said the RSC’s plans are “not reflective of the entirety of the conference.”

There’s also major skepticism among Senate Republicans, including some top Trump allies, who understand that many of their ideas don’t qualify under reconciliation rules, which generally allow only for initiatives that are primarily fiscal in nature. Senators have long deferred to the chamber’s parliamentarian on those judgments.

“A lot of the reforms my colleagues thought about earlier, the parliamentarian didn’t accept,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), adding that he expected only “a pretty limited universe” of health care proposals to pass muster.

Indeed, Senate Republicans tried to include one of Trump’s health care proposals in their megabill last year — funding a kind of insurance subsidy for out-of-pocket payments in a bid to lower premiums for some Obamacare plans. The parliamentarian ultimately ruled the measure was noncompliant.

Trump’s call for insurers and providers to publish their prices is also unlikely to qualify for inclusion, considering that any fiscal impact of the transparency measures would be purely incidental to the policy.

Two senior Republicans involved in the internal conversations granted anonymity to speak about them said GOP leaders will likely have to carve out a narrow slice of the Trump health plan to pursue via reconciliation, if that’s even possible. Other pieces, they said, would have to advance through bipartisan talks with Democrats, who have in the past endorsed proposals to crack down on pharmaceutical industry intermediaries who help negotiate drug prices.

A senior administration official said Thursday that “reconciliation would not be necessary” because the ideas sketched out under the health care framework could get bipartisan support. But at a White House event Friday, Trump acknowledged that was unlikely, saying “the problem we’ll have with this is, we’ll get no Democrat votes.”

There’s another complication: A key plank of the Trump plan — codifying “most favored nation” drug pricing deals — is opposed by many senior Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson said last year he was “not a big fan” of the policy as White House officials tried unsuccessfully to shoehorn it into the GOP megabill.

Still, many Republicans are making a public show of embracing the Trump framework — including Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who quickly reinforced the need for a party-line bill to implement the White House plan after it was released Thursday.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who chairs a Senate committee dealing with health care, said he would take “action” on some of the president’s proposals, including codifying transparency rules. Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who has previously expressed deep skepticism about the GOP’s ability to pass another party-line bill, complimented the plan’s “bold vision” and said his panel would move to advance it.

Any action will be in the hands of the top Republican leaders. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune discussed a second reconciliation bill during their regular weekly meeting last week. Thune said the two will “coordinate” but that the House will be “first movers” on any new partisan package.

“They’ve got some ideas about what they want to do with it,” Thune said. “As I’ve said before, you’ve got to have a reason to do it.”

Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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Congress

Platner raised $4 million, but Collins retains cash advantage

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Progressive political newcomer Graham Platner outraised both Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and Sen. Susan Collins in the first fundraising quarter in Maine’s key Senate race.

But Collins, seeking her sixth term, maintains a formidable cash advantage over both of her Democratic opponents that could give her a head start against whichever Democrat emerges from the June primary.

Platner raised $4.1 million in the first quarter, down from $4.6 million he had raised the prior quarter, while Mills brought in $2.6 million, down from $2.7 million in the final quarter of 2025, which had also included her campaign launch.

Collins brought in just over $3 million and had just over $10 million in the bank. She is also expected to be buoyed by a wave of outside money, with a super PAC supporting her, Pine Tree Results, reporting another $11.5 million cash on hand. Platner had $2.7 million in the bank, while Mills had just over $1 million.

Maine is one of national Democrats’ top targets as they seek to take back the Senate, with Collins the only Republican senator representing a seat won by Kamala Harris in 2024.

But it is one of the few battleground states where Democrats do not have a clear cash advantage. The comparatively lower fundraising totals for Platner and Mills compared to Democratic Senate candidates in states such as Ohio and North Carolina may reflect that some donors are still waiting on the sidelines to see which of the pair emerges to face Collins, while others are choosing sides.

Both Platner and Mills have faced challenges, albeit very different ones, in the primary. Mills, a two-term governor who entered the race with the backing of national Democrats, has trailed in recent public polling despite her near-universal name recognition. Platner, an oysterman and military veteran, quickly caught national attention and has drawn large crowds in the state. But he has been beset with a string of controversies involving old Reddit posts that began in mid-October, near the beginning of the previous fundraising quarter.

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Rogers holds slim cash advantage in Michigan over Dem opponents

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Former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers has opened up a small cash advantage over his Democratic rivals in Michigan’s open Senate race as they battle through a competitive primary. But he hasn’t taken full advantage of the hard-fought contest on the other side to build a big financial edge.

Rogers raised $2.2 million over the first three months of the year and began April with $4.2 million in cash on hand, according to his federal campaign finance filing.

It’s a small cushion, however, especially considering that he has no serious primary competition, with two of his three Democratic potential opponents outraising him for the quarter.

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow raked in $3 million and had nearly $3.7 million in cash on hand. Abdul El-Sayed raised just under $2.3 million and had $2.5 million in the bank. And Rep. Haley Stevens brought in $2 million and had nearly $3.4 million in her coffers.

Still, Rogers is in a better financial position now than at this point in his last Senate run, when he had less than $1.4 million in cash on hand compared to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s $8.6 million. Slotkin beat Rogers in that race by just 19,000 votes as Trump won the state by an 80,000-vote margin.

Rogers is in line for some significant outside aid. The Senate Leadership Fund, a top Republican super PAC, said earlier this month that it would pour $45 million into flipping the seat that will be critical to determining control of the chamber.

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House Transportation chair reveals markup date for highway bill

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House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is targeting April 29 as the markup date for the surface transportation reauthorization bill and is negotiating a topline number between $500 and $550 billion, he told Blue Light News Wednesday.

While a final topline number has yet to be agreed on, Graves said he has a ballpark figure.

“I’m gonna say it’s gonna be somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 billion or $500 billion — somewhere in there. That will be our number. We’re still actually — believe it or not — negotiating that,” Graves said.

That $550 billion total number being discussed for what is also known as the highway bill would be a combination of authorizations and contract authority for a five-year span.

If that number holds, the bill would be well below the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which totaled $1.2 trillion, with $550 billion of that going to new federal spending for roads, bridges, transit, broadband, resilience and water infrastructure. Graves has said he wants the upcoming bill to be more traditional than the previous one with more focus on roads and bridges.

He added that he is in active talks with ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and that he thinks Larsen “wants a little bit more” in funding. Peter True, a spokesperson for Larsen, confirmed Larsen wants a higher number than $550 billion.

Graves said there will be a registration fee for electric vehicles in the surface bill, a long-sought goal of his. Last year, he succeeded in inserting a $250 registration fee for EVs and $100 for hybrids in the House version of the GOP-led budget reconciliation bill, but those provisions never made it into law. He said the EV fee will be different this time around.

“We lowered it a little bit,” Graves said of the EV fee, though he did not provide an exact figure.

As for a registration fee on hybrid cars, he was less clear: “We’re not sure yet, but yes, probably.”

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